The 2015 Agribusiness & Food World Forum

14 - 17 June, 2015. St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. IFAMA 2015 Forum. The 2015 Agribusiness & Food World Forum focused on Innovation, Talent and Technology. Interactive discussions and presentations focused on the common and binding factor that human talent and potential can achieve global nutritional security.

Structured conversations identified the issues and linkages underscoring these thematic areas.
1. Food Security 2050
2. Food and Agribusiness Talent Flow
3. Climate-Smart Food and Agribusiness Systems
4. Deeper-Insight Solutions/ BigData

The program was structured to produce science-based decision-making. Stakeholders deliberated on the necessary public-private collaborations to facilitate development and execution of sustainable and superior solutions which explore opportunities designed to enhance individual organizations’ value innovation capacity.

Background:

IFAMA was formed in 1990 to stimulate strategic thinking across the full spectrum of the food chain. Today, IFAMA serves as an effective worldwide networking organization and acts as a functional bridge between the agribusiness industry, researchers, educators, government, consumer groups and non-governmental organizations. IFAMA provides high quality, value-added products and services to meet the needs of our members, and addresses the many challenges and opportunities facing food chain participants through leadership and innovation. IFAMA’s members are stakeholders in the success of the organization through their involvement in volunteer networks and program activities.

Related
16 July 2015. AFK Insider. What More Asian Agribusiness Firms In Africa Means For US Farmers

Over the last decade more and more Asian agricultural companies, lead by China and India, have invested in African countries to help feed a growing number of the middle class back home.

On the other hand, American companies, which are the biggest suppliers of food items to Asian countries have invested very little in Africa, a continent whose economy Vincent Amanor-Boadu, a agribusiness economics and management professor at Kansas State University, say is very dichotomized.

Amanor-Boadu said that US farmers stand to lose their largest export market in the long term if the world super-power does not change its policy towards Africa and engage Africans on a business front rather than a moral one.

“Think about it this way, 20 years ago the location was Asia. Today what is happening is that Asia is in Africa buying land, producing, so that they can be food self sufficient. So here is our (US) customer that we’ve built a lot of investment in going out and building into production. What does that mean for us?,” Amanor-Boadu told the Market Journal in an interview.

“I’m travelling around Africa and I’m seeing the Chinese playing in all aspect of Africans lives. They are building roads, they are building houses, they are investing in businesses and I can’t find any American company doing that. When I look at that I project forward 20 years, the same way we had the whole engagement with China which froze out other players who had not figured out how to do it, and that’s the same thing that I see here where now the American public policy engagement with Africa is one of trying to tell Africans how to live like us and the Chinese are coming in and are saying we want to do business. So from a long term engagement perspective, putting it into perspective that the middle class is growing and they need products, I think what we need is to look for opportunities to create markets for our food products which generally used our farm products and that chain will create opportunity for our farmers here.”

Related:

Kenneth Zuckerberg, Rabobank Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory Executive Director, speaks about the role of big data in agriculture at IFAMA 2015 World Conference.